rotating swiftly through its cycle, giving the train a little push and then passing on, each little push building up momentum until the whole mono moved. I had no idea how it worked, how the impellors from the other towers didn't interfere with this one, how the transfer from one circle track to the next was handled. None of it. No one in the city understood it. Except the Amonites. The wave passed through my bones again, and I sighed and closed my eyes.
I didn't like the idea that was forming in my head. It wasn't the Amonites, or at least not the local breed that I knew. The people I had seen lived in squalor. They lived to survive, and they lived with their families. They didn't have the kind of technology needed to take down the Fratriarch. And I'd seen no sign of the coldmen, until the end. Certainly I'd seen no sign of the Cult of the Betrayer, no one who would have carried the icon we had recovered melted into the cobbles at the crash site. And the coldmen showing up… what did that mean? Why had they shown up? Were they reacting to my attack, coming to defend their masters, or did our paths just run parallel? Were they looking for the girl?
I pulled the pendant on over my head and tucked it into my shirt. It was warm against my breasts. I held my hand over it for a while, and stared out the window at the towers that moved us around the city of Ash.
* * *
The disassembled bullistic revolver shone golden in the heat of the forge. It was spread out on an anvil of trueiron, each piece set with ritual precision. A row of bullets lay below it, balanced on their casings, like tiny soldiers at attention. I had looked down at this spread a thousand times. At my side, my hands itched to go through the motions of assembly. Not yet.
Tomas stood behind the anvil, dressed in the leather robe of the Blacksmith. He held the ornate hammer of the role in both hands. We were both sweating hard. Tomas looked uncomfortable behind the anvil. This was usually Barnabas's job, but he wasn't around. Tomas lifted the hammer and weakly struck the anvil near the barrel of the weapon. Still, the metal pieces of the weapon jumped.
'Eva Forge, Paladin of Morgan, why have you come to the Blacksmith?' the old man intoned.
'To arm myself,' I answered.
He struck the anvil again, a little harder.
'For battle?'
'Forever.'
Again, hammer to anvil, again a little harder. The anvil sang and the pieces of the revolver jumped. They would have shifted if they had not been locked in place by ritual and rite.
'Do you swear yourself to the struggle of Morgan?'
'I swear myself to the battle, the blade, the bullet.'
Hammer. Anvil. Light runes glowed faintly across the shell casings of the bullets. Lines of arcane light began to itch their way across the pieces of the revolver. My fingers ached to answer them.
'Do you swear yourself to your brothers of Morgan and to your sisters of the Champion?'
'I swear myself to the monastery, to the legions of the Warrior, until the grave.'
Tomas lifted the hammer over his head and struck again. The room was filled with the music of the anvil, and the arcane lines of the revolver nearly outshone the molten gold of the forge behind him. When he struck I could feel the echo of it in my feet.
'Bind yourself now to this weapon, the Terrorfel of Morgan. With it, you must carry the battle, follow the hunt. You must serve the scions of Morgan-'
And I realized he was off script. I looked up. His eyes were full of furious rage. He stared through me, glaring with such hatred that I nearly staggered back.
'You must serve your Fratriarch, whatever the cost.'
I was lost for a response. Words left me. I put a hand against the anvil to steady myself and was shocked at its chill in this place of fire.
'Forever,' I finally managed.
He raised the hammer high above his head and struck as if he meant to shatter this anvil that had stood here for a thousand years. The head bounced off the smooth black surface, the shaft leaving Tomas's hands and rebounding to fly up and drag the hammer back up into the air. It scattered the pieces of my new revolver. The runes of binding screamed through the air as they were bound to my soul.
'Forever,' he said, quietly, then walked out of the ritual chamber. I did my best to avoid Tomas after that. Not sure what his problem was, whether he was angry with me for failing the Fratriarch, or if he was trying to impress upon me the gravity of the situation. As if anyone understood it better than me. Then again, the more I looked into this whole thing, the less I understood. Bull on, I thought, and the clarity will come. Bull on.
* * *
I didn't like what I was finding with the Amonites. Everything about the Amonites' little hiding place was incompatible with a secret conspiracy committed to overthrowing the city's religious hierarchy. So while it was my first inclination to blame the Betrayer's feral children, I just didn't see it in that group. The only thing I wasn't sure about was that escape route. Awfully sophisticated. Even Scholars would be hard-pressed to throw together an impellor on the fly, especially one that could move people. Near as I knew, the technology didn't work like that. The monotrains had some kind of receiver in each car that was specially tuned to the impellor. You could feel the waves go by, but it wouldn't push you around. Not like that thing had.
I had nothing else to do. Alexander's Chanters would do their weird little trick to Cassandra, and we'd know what she knew about the Fratriarch and the free scions of Amon. It wasn't the fastest process, and took a great deal of energy from the godking, so it was not a rite that was lightly used. Until I heard from them, though, I had no other leads to pursue. And the Fist of Elders was locked away in the Chamber. Well, three of them at least-I could hear voices behind the door, Simeon and Tomas and Isabel arguing and reasoning and just… yelling. Elias was missing when I gave my initial report and the others had been in no mood to answer my questions. Wherever the hell he was, he doubtless had his reasons, and it didn't seem likely that the rest of them would grant me even a brief audience for a while.
Getting back to the cistern was easy. The whiteshirts were all over that hideout now, taking lithos and cataloging the debris. Not as much debris this time, though. The coldmen had come through here on their way to killing a bunch of Owen's men, and they had done their share of damage. The whiteshirts were heavily guarded, two guys with bullies for every one scratching in a notepad, and even then they looked nervous. I waved my way through and went downstairs.
The spiral staircase was dented and bloody. Everything smelled like blackpowder and burned metal. Where the hatch used to be there was a crosshatch of yellow opening out onto the water. Two guys in a collapsible raft were beginning to dredge for bodies. They came over at my signal. Probably glad to have a break from dragging the bodies of people they knew out of the water.
'What have you found so far?'
'Six of us, two of them,' the guy with the hook said. 'It's not as deep as we thought.'
'What about the machine?'
'Keeps fouling the hook. Pushing it around in the water.'
'You know where it is?' I asked.
'Sure,' he said. 'At least, I know where we're avoiding.'
'Good enough. I want it up.'
'The machine? That's, uh…' He looked around at the raft, his length of rope, the crude, bloody hook. 'That's a little more than we can manage with this equipment.'
'Then get some better toys. I want that thing on the surface.'
'Okay, okay. Soon as we get the rest of our boys up-'
'They'll still be dead, whether you fish them up now or let them marinate overnight. Get on the rig to your boss and get whatever equipment you need down here. That machine's going to be dry and tight in the next hour, or I'll know who to yell at.'
'Lady, listen-' he started.
